The First Moment
Copyright© 2026 by TMax
Chapter 15: Aliens
Sasha yelled, “Against the wall!” as we emerged from the tunnel and into the dome. I pulled Alice and Morgan to the right. We fell into the soft sand and scurried over to the wall. Sasha, Lanka, Shivam, and Nate pressed up against the wall on the other side. Hank kept running to the trio in the middle.
Two of the trio turned to embrace Hank and stare at our tunnel entrance. Hank slid into the center, his head buried in his hands, curled in the fetal position.
Sasha crouched nearest the tunnel, with Nate behind. Nate’s head looked over Sasha’s shoulder. Shivam’s ass leaned against the wall, his hands on his knees, as he gasped for air. He looked like he needed to throw up. Lanka cried and giggled behind him, muttering something I couldn’t hear.
A stream of rodent-like things burst from the tunnel and ran straight toward the center, until the stream veered right toward another tunnel, where they disappeared. Only a line in the sand remained from the procession. A smooth line, as if they barely touched the ground.
“A herd-like group,” I said as I stared at the tunnel opening they went into. The screams and scurrying sounds echoed out of that tunnel. They had maybe three rabbit-like ears, maybe whiskers, and white, black, brown, green, red, and purple streaked bodies. Possibly a hundred or so individuals. They had run like a funnel of water that swirled. I couldn’t make out individuals in the group.
“Did they want to eat us?” Lanka asked as she draped herself on Sasha. Tears rolled down her cheeks, and Sasha held her like he might hold a child. Nate held Shivam.
Morgan, with a quiver in her voice, said, “No one wants to eat your scrawny body.” Lanka didn’t look over at her, but Sasha squinted and frowned. Even Alice gave Morgan a strange look.
I knew that Morgan just needed to get some control, some normalcy, by reverting to insulting Lanka. Alice beside me shook as she gripped my hand. She mumbled something about always hating rabbit stew.
In the middle of the dome, all four people stared at the tunnel, even Hank, who still sat in the middle of the other three.
“Likely not. Alien physiology and all, likely either running from something or just running as a survival tactic,” I said. Interesting idea. Could an alien even eat us? Somehow, I never thought about that. I mean, most of the animals and stuff on Earth would kill us if we ate them without proper preparation. An alien, with an alien physiology, would likely die if they tried to eat us.
Morgan muttered, “I wonder if they are even carbon-based.”
She must have muttered louder than I thought, or Lanka had great hearing, because Lanka said, “Yeah, silicone like your breasts.”
“They’re not silicone,” Morgan yelled, but also smiled, as Lanka laughed.
Alice leaned her head on my shoulder and whispered, “Fuck, they’re annoying.”
The female from the group in the middle jogged over to Sasha, who now stood and peered into our tunnel.
“So, you’re the first back. What did you see?” the female soldier asked. She had a broken nose, a lopsided grin, and short brown hair with a pattern carved in it. Tattoos covered her body, with piercings anyplace a piercing could get placed. She stood with a slight hunch, like she carried something heavy.
I reached for my wife’s ring and pressed where it had sat. So much a part of me that I hadn’t taken it off since the funeral. Why did earrings and piercings come through but not my ring? What determined what belonged in or on the body and what didn’t?
My gaze followed the path in the side tunnel, back and forth between the tunnels. Real aliens. I knew that my mind needed to focus on something concrete, like my wife’s ring, because the implications of real aliens, strange like, and yet familiar, would drive me crazy. The cold thing inside me thought about the path, the swirls in the sand, and the four small footprints inches from the edge of the right side of the path. Why not more? Why only four?